Peekaboo Bag

I recently made this tote bag as a gift - and I love how it turned out! I almost hated to give it away - I think one of these will have to come into my possession soon!

This is the "Pleated Beauty Handbag" from Bend the Rules Sewing.

A freezer!

For the past four years we have been well served by an over-the-fridge freezer. I've found that I can fit quite a bit of stuff in one of those freezers! However, over the past six months or so I have been using it more than ever. Between making more of my own foods - big batches of English Muffins, jam, chicken broth, refried beans, etc. - and also being able to find things like milk and eggs at discounted prices, which I then freeze to use later, this little freezer is almost constantly stuffed.
As berry season came around, I realized that I would have very little room to freeze berries. Not having blueberries for the winter would be a big disappointment to us. Living in a small apartment, though, doesn't leave much room for having an additional freezer. Not too long ago, however, I happened to see a compact freezer at the store, not much bigger than my little washing machine. I didn't know they made freezers that small. That would be perfect for us!
We were able to get a small, 5 cubit foot freezer, which fits nicely behind our table and perfectly suits our needs! Already it has helped me save some money as I have been able to take advantage of some great deals that I otherwise would not have been able to.
Freezing is the easiest (and thus my favorite) way to preserve food. I am so thankful to have this extra freezer that will not only help me continue to save money by buying food at the best possible prices, but will allow me to continue to make big batches of food to save me time later!


A freezer is not only good for storing food, but it's fun for magnets, too, and we also discovered that you can color on it with crayons, as the crayon just wipes right off (although I'm not encouraging the latter use; we just happened to discover that!) =)

Fun Finds!

A few weeks ago, when browsing an antique store, I found a couple fun little things! I thought this 1950s nut chopper was so cute! I hadn't ever seen one of these, and it was in excellent condition. I don't chop nuts too often, but I found that it will also work for other things, like chopping up chocolate chips for low-fat cookies!


I also picked up a more practical item - clothespins! I'm always running out of clothespins, so I was planning on getting more, and thought these had so much more character than ones I would have picked up at the dollar store. Look how big the springs are compared to the ones I already had (the one in the back)!

The Value in Making it Yourself

Over the past couple of years, I have gradually been making more the things we use, instead of buying them. That includes food, body products, cleaning supplies, as well as things I can sew! Is it cheaper? Faster? Often, but not always. It's often cheaper, but sometimes I could find a similar item for a cheaper price. Sometimes it's easier and quicker for me to make something myself rather than dragging the kids to the store to buy the item, but usually I would buy it on one of my regular shopping trips, so that's not really an issue.
So why do I do it?
Well, for several reasons.
1. It's healthier. I use all real ingredients. No artificial ingredients, no chemicals, no preservatives. Just quality good-for-you stuff.
2. I get better quality for the price. Take bread, for example. I can find bread at the bakery outlet for a little over a dollar. It costs me about the same amount to make bread. But the homemade loaf is much healthier. If I were to buy a loaf of healthy all-natural bread at the natural foods store, I would probably pay around 3 (maybe more!) times as much. So the homemade bread really is a bargain for what I get.
3. It tastes better. Food that's homemade is fresher and that just tastes better.
4. It's an adventure. It's cool to find new recipes or patterns, especially for those things that you would never have thought of making yourself - and especially cool to have them turn out well! Then there's the experimenting and tweaking those things to make them just as you like them!
5. It's fun. I take a lot of pleasure in doing things myself and I get a great sense of accomplishment out of it.

The more I make things myself, the more it makes me want to try even more! I'm currently trying to not buy very many processed foods, so some of the things I (at least sometimes) make myself:

Baked Goods (Bread, muffins, cookies, pizza crust)

English Muffins
Tortillas
Yogurt
Granola
Granola Bars
Ice Cream

Jam

Refried Beans
Salsa

Pizza Sauce

Pasta Sauce

Ketchup
French Dressing
Deodorant
Multi-Purpose Cleaning solution

Some things I'll be trying soon:
Ceasar Dressing
Ranch Dressing
Bagels
Oil Face Cleanse
Laundry detergent
Dish soap

It really is fun and is often not as difficult as it might sound! I would encourage anyone to try to make more yourself!

Blueberry Farm

We did one of my favorite summertime activities this past week - blueberry picking! Of course Benjamin wasn't just going to sit on a blanket this year, and I was worried that he was just going to be running around and eating berries, but he was actually really good! He didn't eat any, and he actually helped a bit! Joanna was really good, too, and took a nap for most of the time!

Cuties!

Two of Benjamin's favorite things...Veggie Tales and cuddling with his sister!

Benjamin thinks my rag dolls are pretty fun to play with!

Joanna is now five months old, and getting so big!

Butter...two ways

I've been wanting to make my own butter for a while - and I finally tried it! I had been planning on making it in a jar, but then read somewhere that you could make it with a hand mixer. So I thought, why not try both? Then I could compare which one was easier. Using a cup of heavy cream (whipping cream), you'll end up with about a half cup of butter and a half cup of buttermilk.


Mixer Method:
Pour the cream in a bowl and start beating with a hand mixer. After a few minutes you'll get whipped cream - just keep beating! The cream gets thicker and thicker, until it starts looking like lots of little lumps (kind of like cottage cheese). Then, gradually, liquid starts appearing. Keep beating until it looks like there's a fair amount of liquid (for me, about 10 minutes total beating) Then, you can gather the small lumps of butter into one big lump. Squeeze it to get all the buttermilk out.


Jar Method:
Pour the cream into a jar (the cream will approximately double in bulk when whipped, so use an appropriate size jar). Cap tightly. Start shaking! I didn't shake vigorously - just a nice constant movement. This method takes a while, but gradually it got thicker and thicker - I opened the lid and checked it a couple of times to see how it was doing. It was thick cream, and then all of a sudden, there was lots of liquid and a lump of butter in the middle. Making the butter this way took about half an hour of shaking. Once again, I squeezed the butter to get the rest of the buttermilk out.

Both methods were really simple and easy, the real difference was the time; ten minutes vs. 30 minutes. However, some other things to consider:
* The jar method was a good way to do something productive while watching TV or a movie (as I did!)
* Shaking the jar was not as tiring as I had thought it would be - I didn't shake it hard, but gently and it worked fine (although maybe it would have been quicker if I had shook it hard)

So which method will I use in the future? Honestly, I'm not sure. I probably will use both at different times - using the jar method makes me feel a little better if I'm just sitting around watching a movie!
The butter turned out really well, and of course, I'm saving the buttermilk to use in some baked goods!

One last note, I know I've read something about rinsing the butter when you make it, but I wasn't really sure how or why that is necessary. I did try rinsing it bit, but I'll have to look into that more for next time.